Unlike with the other major sports broadcasts in the area, televised New England Patriots games are a sort of crapshoot when it comes to who will have the called.

Patriots fans don't get the familiarity of the Don Orsillo/Jerry Remy, Jack Edwards/Andy Brickley or Mike Gorman/Tommy Heinson broadcasting duos with the occasional national broadcast mixed in. Instead, they get a number of national CBS broadcasts to establish the norm, but also a slew of primetime games to prevent any sort of stability.

For the 14 Patriots games that have been televised this season, there have been eight different play-by-play/color commentary duos. When it comes to the ever-rotating cast of characters that bring fans the game, there's a mixed bag of reviews -- usually negative -- to the personalities in the booth.

While there's been plenty along the lines of media criticism aimed towards football broadcasters, there's been little in terms of direct analysis on their performances -- until now.

Thanks to Aaron Gordon from Sports on Earth, we have one of the few (if not the first) analytic breakdowns of the NFL's primary broadcasting duos, The report grades the partners on the number of "infractions" committed during their broadcasts to measure how poor of a job they're doing in actually covering the game. Gordon divided the infractions into six categories:

While the report does little in terms of grading out how "good" the broadcasts are and the level of analysis they provided, it does a good job of measuring how often the announcers make a mistake or are simply wasting the audiences time. Unfortunately for Patriots fans, there's a lot of that during afternoon broadcasts.

Here's how Gordon graded the broadcast duos who have covered the Patriots this season (number of infractions over two games), sorted by number of New England games:

(Note: The study involved breaking down two games by each of the duos at some point during the season. The Brennaman-Aikman duo is a rare combination and was not included.)

Much to many Patriots fans' chagrin, the most common combination they've encountered this season (Gumbel/Dierdorf) was the worst one, and the lowest rated of all the CBS crews. The worst overall, though was the Chris Myers/Tim Ryan duo, which had a score of 87.

Dierdorf, though, blew the competition away as the worst color commentator. Set to retire at the end of the season, Dierdorf dominated the infraction split with his partner Gumbel, 61-9.

While the usual broadcasts leave much to be desired, there was one bright spot to glean from the study: national broadcasts are better.

As opposed to the overall sentiment for Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics national broadcasts (which deprive fans of their usual commentators), there's some benefit for Patriots fans who get to watch their team in the spotlight. The Sports on Earth study rated ESPN, NFL Network and NBC's primetime crews much better overall than the afternoon broadcasts.

The one caveat with this type of study, particularly with the framework under which it was set up, is that many of these games vary in terms of quality of teams and production value. There's a reason that the CBS and FOX early afternoon games are usually ranked lower overall. In most cases, the production value of these games are lower and will rarely feature two top opponents.

Meanwhile, the Thursday, Sunday and Monday night broadcasts are some of the most elaborate productions ever put together in the history of sports television. On top of that, these games often feature two of the best teams in the league, especially once flex games get involved later on in the season.